Leaving aside the surreal and throughly un-Biblical mixing of Jesus and politics at the Values Voter Summit – replete with worship leader Ron Freeman jazzing up the worship hymn with “We’ve got the right Senate and the Congress!” Some thoughts on Rudy Giuliani’s speech this morning.
He made one huge, but not fatal, mistake. At the beginning of the speech he inexplicably launched into a theological discussion of Christianity… in front of a lot of Christians who are quite confident in their theology.
He said, “Christians and Christianity are all about inclusiveness,” and that it was built around a “persecuted few people in roman empire” and their message of love, hope, faith and profound optimism. He neglected to mention Jesus.
Giluiani sounded exactly like the kind of liberal that Christian conservative political types hate – preaching wishy-washy inclusiveness. And did I mention that he failed to even mention the name of Jesus in his mini-sermon on the history of Christianity. It was so shockingly dunderheaded as to make one question not only his theological but his political acumen.
Beyond that, however, the speech was very good – looking at it from the audience’s perspective. He was straight forward. He said that there were areas where they weren’t going to agree but many areas where they might. He was confident, occasionally self-deprecating, and kept hammering the twin themes of trust and leadership. He was someone they could trust (unlike, say, Romney) because he didn’t pander. He was someone who knew how to lead because he was like Reagan.
It will be interesting to see how many people vote for him in the straw poll.